Tag Archives: Luang Prabang

Special Six: Coffee in Luang Prabang

(1) Café de Laos

It is a quaint little coffee house right on the main street running through the old city and opposite Zurich bakery, which serves delicious pastry. I tried the coffee Laotian style, with thick condensed milk.
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(2) Saffron

The lovely café served great coffee. I had their cold brew while enjoying the view of the Mekong. On my last day, I revisited the café to buy some coffee for home.

(3) Joma Bakery

The flat white served at the bakery was quite good and their cinnamon rolls even better.

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(4) Dao Coffee House:

The coffee house was another place that served decent coffee. I tried out their iced coffee as the afternoon sun was very warm outside.
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(5) Dexter Café :

Dexter located on the main street of the old city was just opening up for the day, when I stopped by for my morning coffee. I very much liked the flat white I tried here as much as I liked the Saffron coffee.

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(6) Coffee House at the airport:

At the coffee outlet in the farthest corner of the food court, I had some good iced coffee.
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Do you take the effort to try out locally produced coffee or tea when you travel? Any favourites in Luang Prabang?

Special Six: Eating out in Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is filled with restaurants and cafes to fit all budgets. These however were the six that I liked from the ones I tried out.

(1) Ock Pop Tok Café:

The café at the Living Crafts Center of Ock Pop Tok has a lovely ambience and I specially enjoyed watching the sunset over the Mekong, while enjoying my dinner of Khao Soi. The café screens movies once a week, and seems to be popular among expat communities in the area.

(2) Secret Pizza:

One of the two Airbnb accommodations I stayed at in during my visit to Luang Prabang was at Secret Pizza. Not only was the place lovely, they served pizzas on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the garden transformed into a lively and bustling meeting place for families with children. Since my room overlooked the garden, I enjoyed my ‘secret’ pizza on the little patio of my room away from the busy center.

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(3) Khai Phaen: A vocational training restaurant, that provides training for youth from marginalized communities, was one place that I had marked that I needed to visit during my travel to Luang Prabang. The place was lovely and the food, Sai Oua with Jeok Mak Keua, was delicious. I was especially happy to see these leaflets on the table on ways travelers could better protect children in local communities.

(4) Dao Coffee House:

Described as a traditional coffee house, I stopped by to try Dao’s coffee and ended up having lunch. I tried out Naam Khao, which is a kind of fried rice ball salad mixed with sausages, nuts, herbs wrapped in green leaves and eaten with a dipping sauce.

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(5) Phon Heuang:

A tiny café near the Garavek theatre, the place served tasty and filling portions of meals for a fraction of the cost of more upscale restaurants like Khai Phaen and Ock Pop Tok. I had rice with basil chicken stir fry. While similar to the Thai dish, there was a difference in the seasoning.

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(6) Night market

A fan of coconut pancakes, I used to buy a portion of coconut pancakes each evening at the night market, during my stay at the heritage house in the old city.

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 If you have been to Luang Prabang, what were some of your favourite places to eat?

Tamarind Cooking School

During my trip to Luang Prabang, I booked a cooking class with Tamarind Cooking School.

Meeting up at their restaurant, I was served a herbal drink while waiting for all those who had booked for the day to arrive. Once everyone was ready, a van took us to a local market where the cooking instructor showed us some of the herbs used in Laotian cooking.

After our walk around the market, we were taken to the cooking venue amidst paddy fields. There, after donning our aprons, we started with cleaning the sticky rice and placing it in the basket to steam.

We then proceeded to make a range of dishes. We started with Mokpa, fish steamed in banana leaf and Laap, a salad made of minced chicken and herbs.

We were given the option of choosing one of two types of dipping sauce to make. I chose to make Jaew Mak Khua (eggplant sauce). This delicious dip was basically roasted eggplant mashed with herbs and spices. We ate it with the sticky rice we had cooked.

We also learnt to make Ua Si Khai (stuffed lemongrass). This was minced chicked mixed with herbs and spices and stuffed in a basket cut into lemongrass stalks. The stuffed stalks were then dipped in egg yolk and deep fried. I had trouble cutting the lemongrass stalks and needed help with it.

Our group was then invited to eat the food we had cooked for lunch.

IMG_0767From the food I had cooked, I enjoyed best the eggplant dip with sticky rice and Mokpa.

After we had finished our main meal, we were invited to cook our dessert which was black sticky rice cooked in coconut milk and served with cut fruit topping and tamarind jam produced by the cooking school.

IMG_0769The Tamarind Cooking School experience was a lovely and fun way to be introduced to Laotian cuisine.

Special Six: Spotlight on Luang Prabang

Earlier this year, in February, I had taken a short holiday to Luang Prabang over another long weekend.

The following six are some of the key highlights of the city, for the first time visitor.

(1) Temples of Luang Prabang:

Right in the center of the UNESCO heritage city is this famous landmark of Luang Prabang, the royal palace temple. It’s construction was completed in 2006. Every evening, the area around this temple transforms into a lively night market.

With over 30 temples concentrated within the tiny heritage city, you are bound to come across a temple with every few steps that you take.

(2) Garavek:

Storytelling of local folklore, accompanied by music, is what Garavek is about. The tiny theatre opens for an hour each evening for a rendition of selected folk stories by two performance artists. The story that still stays in mind is the one where the story teller linked the famous Mount Phou Si in the middle of Luang Prabang to Sri Lanka and Hanuman.

 (3) Traditional Arts and Ethnology Center (TAEC):

To have an introduction to the ethnic groups in Laos, a visit to the TAEC is a must. Not only is information on the four main ethnic groups in Laos presented there, aspects of culture – clothing, music, handcrafts are also shared. The handicraft store at the center is also a good place to get gifts for home, as it directly links up with artisans across Laos.

(4) Ock Pop Tok: 

Founded in 2000 as a social enterprise, Ock Pop Tok is a lovely textile and artisanal institution. While there is an outlet in the center of the city, it is worthwhile to visit the Living Craft Center, where there is a museum and shop, that one can visit.

Ock Pop Tok Living Craft Center also has café and offers bed and breakfast as well.

(5) Sunset Cruise:

A sunset cruise on the Mekong is another must. There are so many boats and packages that you can walk along the river bank and choose the one that interests you.

(6) Kuang Si Waterfalls:

This is a half-day or day trip from Luang Prabang, depending on how much time you wish to spend at the waterfalls. I hired a car from outside of Joma Bakery and left around 8am. When I arrived at the entrance, there were not many visitors yet so I was able to enjoy the environment in peace.

Kuang Si waterfalls is a three levelled waterfalls. People generally stop when they reach the second level.

To reach the top level, one needs to climb a steep path to the side of the second level waterfall. While I generally have issues climbing steep paths, I was feeling quite healthy that morning and very much keen to go to the top of the falls. I started my climb and I hardly met anyone going up the path, though I did meet a few while coming down. It was a tough climb for me and there were moments when I scolded myself for taking the risk of climbing alone and the fact that if I were injured midway, it would be very difficult to get back down. For those without leg issues, the climb should be quite an easy one though there are some sections without any steps or rails. However, I made it to the top and saw the beautiful tranquil pool that seemed to be the start of the top waterfall level.

For my stay in Luang Prabang, I had booked two Airbnb places. I especially liked the place that I stayed in for the second half of my trip. The accommodation was an old traditional house, which was part of the heritage of the city, right in the center of the old city and my room window opened out to the alley, where there was an early morning market every day.

The best part of my travel to Luang Prabang though was meeting this little fellow, Tak, a resident at the Airbnb and who followed me everywhere like a puppy, the minute I stepped into their courtyard.

IMG_0867If you have not been to Luang Prabang, I highly recommend a visit to this lovely city.

Rice Noodles at an Organic Farm

While searching for some unique experiences to try out during my visit to Luang Prabang a couple of weeks ago, I came across an interesting tour that stated it would involve making rice noodles from scratch. Intrigued I booked the tour and was informed that I would be picked up at 8.50am on the day of the tour from my accommodation place. As the tour operator had mentioned that I was the only one booked for the day, I was surprised to see a family of three when I got into the van. One of them had been working in Luang Prabang for the past 7 months and had already gone on this tour and had decided to take her visiting parents to share her experience of the organic farm.

The guide introduced himself as Lee and informed us that we would be visiting his family’s farm. He explained that there were 7 brothers in the family and him being the 7th brother, the farm was called Lee 7 farm.

Upon arriving at the organic farm, a group of children greeted us and Lee mentioned that they were his and his siblings’ kids, who were all at the farm because it was the weekend. He also introduced us to two children from the neighbouring village, who were learning English, and who he had invited over to the farm during tour days so that they could practice their language skills with visitors.  Lee first gave us a tour of his herb and vegetable patch, where he was growing different herbs and supplying to restaurants in the city.

IMG_0779.JPGAfter sharing some of his successful and unsuccessful farming stories, Lee pointed out his family’s paddy fields and mentioned that the rice grown on the farm was just sufficient for his extended family’s annual rice consumption.

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We were then introduced to his buffalo, Pling, and a demonstration of ploughing a plot of land was given.
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After the others in the group tried out the ploughing, we pulled some paddy from the nursery and planted it in the international rice patch, so called because Lee had his international visitors to the farm sow the paddy in that patch.

Then, Lee proceeded to show us how the rice was threshed and then winnowed and the different ways of carrying the grain baskets. We moved to the rice de-husking area with one of the baskets and ground the de-husked grains to rice flour.

Lee explained that the rice flour was fermented for a few days before being made into rice noodles. A teacher by profession, Lee mentioned that he had got the idea for the tour when he realized that very few of the younger generations in his village knew how to make rice noodles. Given that his neighbour was an expert noodle maker, Lee decided to partner with her to share their heritage with the younger generations as well as international visitors.

Lee’s neighbour then demonstrated how the fermented rice flour was kneaded and converted to the noodle batter.

The batter was then squeezed into a pot of boiling water and cooked for a few minutes.

Once the noodles were cooked, it was transferred to a pot of cold water and then transferred to the serving tray.

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After showing me how to make a papaya salad, Lee invited us to have our freshly made lunch of rice noodles with steamed vegetables and papaya salad.

IMG_0848The freshly made rice noodles was delicious with the tangy papaya salad and the four of us enjoyed it seated around a low table on a raised platform overlooking the paddy fields.

IMG_0854.jpgLee decided to make us some fresh sugarcane juice after lunch and we relaxed with the sweet drink while sharing some of our travel plans for the coming days.

The Lee7Farm tour is an authentic experience that I would recommend and especially as it supports a local entrepreneur trying to maintain and share his organic lifestyle.

Fifi and Hop